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IBM Redux: Lou Gerstner and the Business Turnaround of the Decade |  |
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IBM Redux: Lou Gerstner and the Business Turnaround of the Decade | |
When Lou Gerstner took the helm at IBM in 1993, the company was headed toward bankruptcy. Six years later Big Blue was back and better than ever: its stock at an all-time high; its coffers filled with cash; and its market capitalization a healthy $169 billion. How did Gerstner do it?
With unprecedented access to current and former IBM employees, and drawing upon more than 150 interviews and hundreds of pages of documents, journalist Doug Garr offers the first in-depth took at the IBM miracle and the man who made it happen. From the complete overhaul of the company's image and culture to the takeover of Lotus and the development of network technology, Garr vividly illustrates Gerstner's operating methods, management philosophy, and vision. Fastpaced and fascinating, IB14 Redux provides rare insight into the world of information services and offers prescient advice on what IBM and its competitors need to do to keep on thriving in the twenty-first century.
Carr, a former IBM speechwriter, possesses an insider's knowledge about the Gerstner years at IBM: the despair of watching the company sink into the tar pits of ever-deeper red ink; the ruthlessness of the early firings and other cost controls (one woman was downsized--"excessed" is the actual IBM euphemism--when she was eight and a half months pregnant and coming off a stellar performance review; another was given his termination papers while in a coma); the business decisions that led to the turnaround; and finally the elation of seeing the company reinvented as a nimble information-services provider.
This is far from a hagiography of Gerstner, however. Because Carr didn't have access to him, he relies on anecdotes from those who know Gerstner and have worked with him, and the result is a fascinating portrait of the CEO as a young man (one former high school football teammate recalls an errant pass from quarterback Gerstner that led to the teammate's career-ending knee injury); as a man in a hurry (the chapters on Gerstner's years at American Express and RJR Nabisco foreshadow his accomplishments at IBM); and finally as a seasoned businessman who succeeded in overhauling a company that few thought would survive intact. --Lou Schuler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The joy of this book doesn't come from ground-breaking reporting. Rather, its appeal comes in the details: how Gerstner decided to forgo splashy graphics at a major computer show, as a way to stand out from all the hype; how desperately the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide needed to win the IBM account, once Gerstner and his new team were in place; and what it was like negotiating the purchase of Lotus. This is no small feat in writing about IBM, a company that is renowned for limiting access to reporters, and Garr's accomplishment is even more remarkable since Gerstner himself is known to keep an even closer eye on his public image than the IBM spin doctors do. Even so, Garr managed to talk to numerous present and former IBM employees, who give first-hand recollections and impressions of Gerstner in actionAmany of which are riveting. Garr is a former IBM speechwriterAa fact that cuts both ways, as he convincingly explainsAbut his reporting is evenhanded, and his eye for detail extraordinary. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
This story about IBM under the leadership of Lou Gerstner is a portrait of one of America's most respected and most private superstar managers. Gerstner and his methods took IBM from an $8 billion loss in 1993 to an astounding $6 billion profit in 1997. Garr, a business journalist and former IBM speechwriter, chronicles Gerstner's methods and classic management philosophy: cut costs, restructure the bureaucracy, and overhaul the culture and image of the company. Gerstner's ideas and methods changed IBM from a dying mainframe company in the age of personal computers to an information services giant. Garr covers the development and early success of the Aptiva, the planning and failure at the Atlanta Olympics, and more. Using Gerstner and IBM as vehicles, he explains how to control media spin. An outstanding case study for academic, special, and public library business collections. [See also Robert Slater's Saving Big Blue: Leadership Lessons and Turnaround Tactics of IBM's Lou Gerstner, coming from McGraw-Hill in September.AEd.]ASusan C. Awe, Univ. of New Mexico Lib., Alburquerqu.
-ASusan C. Awe, Univ. of New Mexico Lib., Alburquerque
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The Industry Standard
Lou Gerstner is an egomaniac. That's the bad news. The good news is that he's a hardworking egomaniac with a knack for cutting through the bullshit. Which just so happened to be what IBM needed in 1993, when Gerstner took the helm of one of the greatest companies in American business history.
That's the word from Doug Garr, a former IBM speechwriter, in his new book, IBM Redux. To hear Garr tell it, IBM was a mess in the early '90s, when Gerstner was brought in to turn the company's fortunes around. In 1991, the company lost $2.9 billion. During the next two years, IBM lost $5 billion and $8.1 billion, respectively. IBM had lost ground in just about every market in which it had products.
Gerstner was fresh from stints at American Express and RJR Nabisco, and relatively new to technology, but the latter didn't matter to IBM. The company needed someone from outside Big Blue to change its culture. (Gerstner, in fact, was the first IBM chief executive from outside the company.)
It's a familiar story. IBM, after years of success, was fat and happy. While its revenues remained consistently high, its losses grew. The cost of doing business was too high and internal fiefdoms in its divisions had made it difficult to rein in costs. Garr quotes Gerstner when he first took over: "We're making $64 billion a year. By far, the most money in the information-technology business is being spent with us. The problem is that it's costing us $69 billion to do it. So, how do we deal with this?"
The story of the need to change IBM's culture is an important one. Garr writes that IBM at the time was filled with middle managers and executives long on how computers work, but short on what technology could do for the consumer. Gerstner, as a consumer himself – at American Express he authorized purchases of IBM equipment – understood the difference, and set about reshaping the company.
Garr has nothing but praise for the way Gerstner turned around IBM's business. But he doesn't go soft on him, either. For instance, he details what happened when Fortune ran an infamous article on Gerstner titled "The Holy Terror Who's Saving IBM." Gerstner was so enraged by his characterization as gruff, rude and more than a little arrogant that he actually pulled all of IBM's advertising from the magazine and ordered IBM employees not to return phone calls from Fortune staffers.
As recently as 1998, the feud was still going on. Garr writes that Gerstner was scheduled to give the keynote address at PC Expo but backed out a month before the conference because of a "scheduling conflict." The truth, according to Garr, was that when Gerstner learned that Fortune was sponsoring his address, he demanded that the magazine's banner be removed from the meeting hall. Fortune refused and Gerstner opted out.
On balance, Garr writes a detailed account of the business issues at IBM that Gerstner had to deal with. Books like these are, of course, hard to write. Different sources within a company as large as IBM have different agendas and may not have reason to give entirely accurate accounts. To Garr's credit, IBM Redux has the ring of truth.
– Jim Evans
